Anette Lusher has been an artist since she was a child and now her abstract acrylic on canvas paintings are on display at Covington City Hall.

Lusher, who now lives in Southeast King County, was born and raised in Germany where she earned a bachelor’s degree in art and photography in 1971.

“Art and music was an integral part of my life,” Lusher said in an artist’s statement provided to the city. “I was intrigued as a child by colors, forms and sound. Always looking for some paper and pencils, my world existed of expressing myself to those around me through art.”

While in high school, Lusher found a mentor in her art teacher, Wolfgang Vogel, who helped her define skills and techniques.

“He would challenge me in many a painting by criticizing a stroke, how and where I placed a certain color or questioned me why would I approach it from this particular angle,” she says. “The best part, however, was that I learned from my early artistic endeavors that I can, have to, and should strive to be passionate and honest within myself.”

Lusher says that though she occasionally paints realistic scenes, she tends to view the world as colors, “which sometimes makes the paintings esoteric,” and as a result the majority of her work is abstract.

“I often work from a thought which has a surreal quality in itself or a notion of unconscious concepts which may be hidden or in plain sight,” she says. “This process can be fast and furious or cumbersome and slow. But, in any way, it’s a rewarding, engaging moment.”

Covington City Hall is just the latest place Lusher’s work has been displayed in a long list ranging from galleries across Kentucky and Washington state.

More information on Lusher can be found at www.artslant.com, the City’s Web site or www.cocaseattle.org, Center on Contemporary Art where her work was recently shown in the exhibition, “Resident Alien.”